I’m joining the conversation a few days late, but I was just perusing the thread of comments to the “BIW – Podcast 31” post, and was struck by some of the topics exchanged. On the one hand, there seems to be a war of the worlds—between the art of SL and of the material world. On the other, there is a call for “remediation” and “translation” between them.
Why can’t the art just stand on its own as art? Why must it be prefaced by the modifier “SL” or “material” at all?
A note of clarification: My discussion of “context” in a previous post (which was not my word, but was quoted from Jay’s comments in the Podcast) seems to have been conflated with my discussion of “antecedents.” By antecedent, I did not mean “precedent.” As my old philosophy professor used to argue, we are living in a world of infinite proliferation of signs; frankly, it would be hard to prove definitively any lack of precedents, that something had not been done before, or that no allusions were at stake.
In grammar, an antecedent is most often the noun (or phrase) that is referred to later on in a sentence by a pronoun. It has nothing to do with volition or creation; the antecedent did not somehow make room for the emergence of the pronoun which followed it. The pronoun is only as good as its antecedent. It (the pronoun) simply offers a way to limit redundancy, to increase linguistic efficiency; but in all accounts it should be able to be directly switched at any moment by its antecedent with no change in meaning at all. When people choose poor pronouns (think: “That One” in the debates) and this switch cannot be done without changing the meaning, problems can and do ensue. We count on the relationship between pronoun and antecedent in linguistics. By their nature pronouns can refer to so many things; it is through the relationship to a unique antecedent that the exact shape and definition of a pronoun can be discernible at all.
With the use of “antecedent” and “referent,” I was not trying to make sweeping comments on the history of SL art, virtual art, or any art all. I was introducing the language of semiotics into this discussion because I think that a look at the “economy of signs” can play an important role in the understanding of what we see at BIW.
A reiteration of my first post: “The art is visual, two-dimensional in a way that not even painting can be–it is projected to its audience through pixels, which are smaller than any paper or canvas. It has no existence outside of this flat reality, so that the image of the art becomes the self-conscious focus.”
I think perhaps this language of semiotics is most interesting because it can be used to describe and understand art in both the virtual and material worlds. As Venturi et. al. used the language of semiotics to put postmodern architecture onto the plane of discussion in the field (in their seminal Learning from Los Vegas), so too I think that an introduction of this language here could be helpful in eliminating the need to separate the “material” and “virtual” art of today.
Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
